Description

Viewing the taken-for-granted from under a different aspect: A video-based method in pursuit of patient safety

RICK IEDEMA

Executive Director Centre for Health Communication, Professor of Organizational Communication, University of Technology, Sydney NSW, Australia

EAMON THOMAS MERRICK

Research Fellow Health Communication, Centre for Health Communication, University of Technology, Sydney NSW, Australia

DORRILYN RAJBHANDARI

ICS Research Coordinator, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital; Honorary Researcher, Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health, University of Technology, Sydney NSW, Australia

ALAN GARDO

Nurse Unit Manager – Intensive Care Service, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney NSW, Australia

ANNE STIRLING

Clinical Nurse Specialist – Intensive Care Service, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney NSW, Australia

ROBERT HERKES

Medical Director – Intensive Care Service, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney NSW, Australia

ABSTRACT

Contemporary clinical work involves the collaboration of different health care practitioners to provide safe, effective, and high quality services. Yet practitioner collaboration is often fraught with political, professional and ideological divergences. For these reasons opportunities for health care practitioners to come together and develop a shared meaning of practice is often constrained by organizational and professional agendas. The methodology reported on here has allowed health care practitioners to critically engage with their own practice, and the practice of their colleagues, in a way that enables them to negotiate and mitigate their differences and divergent opinions and practices. Through the use of video reflexive methods health care practitioners were able to articulate systematizing or ‘meta discursive’ solutions to address previously taken-as-given organizational and clinical (handover) practices.

Keywords: Video reflexivity, clinical handover, meta-discourse